Yakima vs. Whatcom Historical Turnout

An interesting and provocative article in the New York Times looks at Yakima County as prototypical of America's racial divide. What follows in this post is election turnout history and CVAP data comparing Yakima and Whatcom Counties.

Yakima GE Turnout (tan) vs. Whatcom GE Turnout (blue-gray). Note the differences between odd years (local) and even years (federal). Also note the spikes for Presidential years (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016).  Visually, there is a marked increase in the difference between Whatcom and Yakima turnout over time. Turnout is defined here as TotalBallots/TotalVoters. Data above from WA SoS Voter Participation data. Click to enlarge the chart.

Yakima's registered voter population is historically much lower than Whatcom County. However,  WA SoS Voter Participation data far below tells us that the two counties population and population growth rates are very similar. The difference lies in CVAP (Citizen Voting Age Population) details. Details from Census Data in the following two tables show us that although Yakima may have more adults 18 or older (ADU_EST) and more citizens (CIT_EST), Yakima citizen voting age population (CVAP_EST) is smaller than Whatcom by nearly 17K votes.  There are a number of possible explanations for this difference. Probably the best guess is that registration rates are lower in Yakima than Whatcom County. For clarity here, I do not display error margin data.

	GEONAME	TOT_EST	ADU_EST	CIT_EST	CVAP_EST
1	Whatcom County, Washington	212740	170315	201750	160225
2	Yakima County, Washington	248280	174040	215030	143230

Yakima 'Hispanic or Latino' citizen and voting age populations are much larger than Whatcom County.

	GEONAME	CIT_EST_Hispanic or Latino	CIT_EST_White Alone	CVAP_EST_Hispanic or Latino	CVAP_EST_White Alone
1	Whatcom County, Washington	15110	165400	8665	136125
2	Yakima County, Washington	88215	109645	42355	89480

Yakima GE Total Voters (tan bars) vs. Whatcom GE Total Voters (blue-gray bars). Lines are Total (Returned) Ballots with smoothed trend lines Red = Yakima and Blue = Whatcom. Note the differences between odd years (local) and even years (federal) for Total (Returned) Ballots.   Visually, there is a marked increase in the difference between Whatcom and Yakima Total Voters and Total (Returned) Ballots over time which is more interesting since the populations are now very equal.  Data above from WA SoS Voter Participation data. Click to enlarge the chart.

GE turnout percent is defined here as TotalBallots/TotalVoters. Data below is from WA SoS Voter Participation data. For the years, 2014 - 2018, Whatcom County submitted a total of 155,181 more ballots than Yakima County:

  FiveYearsWhatcom           FiveYearsYakima

  425,602                                270,421

	Year	Ballots_Whatcom	Ballots_Yakima	Population_Whatcom	Population_Yakima	TO_Whatcom	TO_Yakima
1	2000	74671	70606	126579	151830	75.90	75.90
2	2001	44163	42971	130401	153229	45.10	45.40
3	2002	55066	48537	133561	154023	60.10	54.20
4	2003	45786	38417	135547	156606	48.30	42.60
5	2004	91515	73647	139495	158427	86.30	75.90
6	2005	62792	52837	143732	160082	61.90	56.90
7	2006	69565	55561	148252	162097	68.30	61.00
8	2007	54757	46062	152846	164044	53.40	50.50
9	2008	100536	75364	155250	166133	87.30	77.10
10	2009	60792	44663	157459	168002	53.20	45.90
11	2010	86591	63104	158935	169193	74.30	63.30
12	2011	69098	46672	159466	170617	59.00	46.00
13	2012	104678	78392	160944	171614	83.30	73.60
14	2013	69703	39893	163055	172262	54.70	37.50
15	2014	76083	50571	164766	173080	60.50	47.80
16	2015	61114	35381	166723	173282	47.00	32.50
17	2016	114854	80853	169182	172849	82.50	70.80
18	2017	63614	32207	172390	175362	45.90	28.10
19	2018	109937	71409	176040	177052	76.80	61.60

For GE 2019, Yakima had the lowest turnout rate of the top 15 most registered counties in WA. Yakima 40,678 accepted ballots returned was less than half of Whatcom County's 82,537. Click to enlarge the chart: